I lost both hands in an accident when I was 11 years old. I was a pretty good baseball and hockey player at the time, and thought I’d never play those sports again. But my dad thought differently. Inventively, he fabricated a really handy – but strange-looking – adapted hockey stick for me to use with my prosthetic hands.

There are heroes all around us. Specifically, heroes with disabilities. Too bad we can’t always tell them so.

Long has it been somewhat of a faux pas to admire someone with a disability just because… well, just because they are living with a disability. And to tag them with a gratuitous character statement of “courageous” along with the hero status is no good either in the spheres of political correctness. Too bad about that too.

It happened more than 20 years ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember how nauseating it felt maybe more than anything. I was completely mortified. I’m talking about way beyond embarrassed. I’m talking about a hey-genie-grant-me-my-last-wish-and get-me-outta-here humiliation.

Funny thing is, if it would have happened to me today, at this stage of life as an amputee, I would’ve laughed so hard that that tactless, brash-mouthed, gravel-voiced tourist lady would’ve thought my problems were even more serious than imagined. In life, timing is everything I guess.